What We See
by Dreaming of Everything
Summary: Sakura has been considered crazy for years for apparent hallucinations. Sometimes, though, it's just a matter of how much more someone sees... AU, AR. Sakura centric, gen. Possibly on permanent hiatus, don't hold your breath for updates.
1. Crazy

**What We See  
****Chapter One: Crazy  
**By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto; not the characters, events or settings.

**Author's Notes:** This is, to a certain extent, a reaction to all the bad Crazy!fics I've seen. To start with, this is not actually a fic about crazy people, per se, at least not as they are in our world. It has a lot more to do with magic and translations of reality.

There may be potential **SPOILERS** for post-timeskip events. By-and-large, though, this is a very alternate AU/AR, and you shouldn't be spoiled too badly.

I hope you enjoy this! Please **read and review**. It makes me excessively happy.

Sorry about the linebreaks, quick edit was eating my old ones. AND, APPARENTLY, THE WORD 'QUICK EDIT.' (Help, help, I'm being repressed!)

Revised Note: There will be no pairings, and certainly nothing central to the plot.

oOoOoOo

The girl's pink hair made a stark contrast against the paleness of her skin, the whiteness of her clothes and the walls. The room she was in was almost totally empty, except for a simple bed and desk, and a door, everything simple, generic and impersonal.

She was relaxed in the sterile environment, chatting happily.

No one else was in the room. It might or might have been monitored; sometimes it was and sometimes it wasn't. They never told her it was, denied it when she had asked, but she knew better. She was by no means stupid. She had also stopped caring that they watched her like that, secretly, years ago. She didn't let it bother her now.

"I need to cut my hair again—it's getting too long," she said, playing with a strand of it. "I need to dye it again, too."

She paused for a minute. "You know I don't like my natural color! It just doesn't feel right… I've liked it this sway since I was five. I know—Hey! It does **not** make my forehead look bigger!"

It was like listening to someone talking on a phone, when you can only hear half the conversation.

oOoOoOo

Sakura Haruno was insane. She had been in and out of mental-health institutions since the age of seven, when her brother had died.

It wasn't schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder or disassociative identity disorder. She wasn't bipolar. It wasn't because of her brother's death—she had had hallucinations previously, though they had hadn't been as severe, and they had been passed off as the imaginary friends every child has. It wasn't drugs or alcohol, brain damage or other physical abnormalities, any known mental disorder or condition. It was unlikely that it was genetic; no one else in her family had shown any such tendency. No one else, related or not, had had the symptoms she had at all.

For the past ten years, Sakura Haruno had hallucinated people. A whole community of them, complex and detailed, growing up in real time, totally different in appearance and personality from both her and each other, and the real people Sakura knew.

She had no other hallucinations. She was aware enough to realize that they did not follow the rules of reality. They never appeared around other people, only when she was alone, but she was withdrawn, preferring the company of her hallucinations to anyone else.

They had tried to find incongruities in her world, contradictions, something to stick in her mind and remind her it couldn't be real, that it wasn't. They hadn't found any.

They had tested her, trying to determine whether or not the hallucinations were fabricated, some attempt at attention or manipulation on her part. They couldn't prove it.

Ten years and a stream of neurologists and psychologists, doctors and mental-health therapists, the biggest names in the field, and there was nothing conclusive about anything. The only result was a detailed list of the figments of her imagination: when she met them, her interactions with them, how often they recurred and how they had grown over the years.

She was both insane and a genius, either way. Whether it was hallucinations so detailed that they trumped most people's perception of reality and lasted cohesively over a full decade and maybe longer, or a genius that could compose a story that was so persuasive, coherent and thorough at such a young age, but was warped enough to attempt to persuade the world, with no break, for a full decade, that she was crazy, remained to be seen.

oOoOoOo

For ten years, Sakura Haruno had been kept under more-or-less continual observation in closed environments, allowed limited (and even then, only supervised) contact with the outside world. In the beginning, she had spent time at her home, but her parents couldn't manage both their crazy child and the heavy ghost of their dead son.

Her time in hospitals and research labs and psych wards and recovery homes had been paid for by her parents, wealthy relatives and the state, but now she was 17. Nearly an adult. And nothing had changed, except now her parents were even more distant than they had been at first. She still spoke to thin air, when nothing was there.

She would have been discharged long ago, sent to boarding school or another relative or been hidden in her parents' house, but she was still considered "a potential danger to herself and others."

Her hallucinations seemed largely benign, but the conversations she had when she was both halves could become graphic, describing violent deaths and cold-blooded murders, assassinations and worse. Horrific monsters, human and not. And then there were the nightmares…

Most of her hallucinations were recurrent, but one 'person' had only been mentioned once. She had been terrified by the specter, shaking and panicked, and she had scored deep cuts across her left arm and leg, running a painful scrape against her cheek, staining herself with blood. She had said that it had tried to kill her, that he had been fought off before he could do it, that she had needed to defend someone— She had switched how she had referred to the figment, _it_ and _he_, alternating between the two.

She had been twelve, then. All they had to connect to that incident was a name: Sabaku no Gaara, Gaara of the desert.

It was the last time she had been left unsupervised for years. It was the last time she had been allowed near anything sharp, anything she could lift, anything she could hurt herself with. They couldn't risk her hurting herself or others.

And nobody had any idea of what to do with Sakura Haruno.

oOoOoOo

"You're quiet today," said her therapist. The latest of many.

She reached for her left arm, nearly unaware of the action, cradling it. "Today's the anniversary."

The therapist had known that. She had wanted to see if _Sakura_ remembered that, though, as she had the past four years.

"Why is this continuing to haunt you? Why can't you let it go?"

Sakura frowned, eyes troubled, subconsciously worrying at her lip, chewing on it until she threatened to break through the skin.

"I was safe, before. When I'm alone, there's nobody who bears me any ill-intent, the only animosity is mixed with friendliness… Here, I am tested and retested, worked with and ordered and prodded in the 'right' direction; you try to fix me when there's not anything broken."

The counselor swallowed reflexively. Nobody had wanted to think about the chance that the problem had been exacerbated by their attempts to help… It had been hinted at before, but never this clearly, and there was very little they could do without Sakura's parents' permission.

Sakura had continued, unaware of the therapist's wavering attention. "And then… **He **came. I hadn't been expecting that. He scared me when I first saw him, but I had been with the others and he had been more—more controlled. And then he changed, and something snapped inside him… He was going to kill Sasuke. I had to do something. He had already tried to kill Lee."

She paused, eyes troubled and brooding. "He watches me, you know. I haven't seen him since then, but in the past year I've felt him watching. I think some of the others feel him too, but I don't know what they think about it, now. They don't talk about it, anyways, so I don't know. But I don't like the feeling that there's always someone watching…"

The therapist hoped so badly that they weren't the ones who had sewn this into Sakura, made it a part of her.

They had been trying to _help_. They had always only been trying to help…

oOoOoOo

Sakura woke in a cold sweat. At least there was that… If she was waking up, she had been asleep, and it had been a dream, and dreams weren't real.

But she could still feel the eyes, watching her.

"Hello?"

No use pretending if someone _was_ there, and she was almost positive there was. If there wasn't, at least there wasn't anyone to hear her but herself.

She caught a flash of green eyes (_shrunk to pin-point dots and the whites expanded stark against the dark lining and that smile, fixed and horrifying and promising all the pain he was capable of causing—_) and spun around to meet them, trying not to shriek, not to bring anyone else running, the doctors and the orderlies and the janitors who came in during the night, so he couldn't kill them along with her, and there was no Naruto, no Sasuke, not even Lee or Ino or Shikamaru or Hinata or Neji to save her now, no one was there, she was all alone—And then she caught the whirl of pink hair and raised her eyes to meet her own reflection, caught in a mirror, her eyes wide with fear and nearly the same color that **his** (_but not as cold and broken and deadly, like thin ice shattered when you walk too far out, and the water underneath it, cold and deadly—_) and she deflated, turning around with a sigh, berating her silliness, tension draining out as she relaxed her body—

And turned to meet those eyes where there was no mirror, and the paleness of skin and the fall of red hair against it, darker in this lighting, like the color of dried blood, nearly black and rusty and unmistakable. Her body froze, breath stilling in her throat, heartbeat sounding as if she was already dying, already drowning, muffled and wet in her own ears. She clinically noted that she was hyperventilating. At least she wasn't crying.

He frowned at her, the slightest twitch in an expressionless face, and she knew her eyes had contracted with fear and she was _prey_ like this, helpless, in this weak body that had never felt right, she knew that, she should be able to attack and defend and escape, if need be, like she needed to now, but she couldn't, it wasn't right, like the blonde-brown-honey color her hair was naturally, and why was she thinking of hair now? She needed to dye it again, the roots were starting to show, and at least nobody would miss her very much when she died—

"Sakura Haruno."

It was not a question. She tried to respond, an automatic response to her name—_of course you answer when someone calls, it's only polite, reflexive now_—and the fear, anything to raise her chances of surviving, not that multiplying zeroes made any difference in the end.

She couldn't find the air, a panicked sigh that should have been words, been screaming or pleading or denial or refusal or anything, and she could feel the sobs of crying now, if not the tears.

Her body shook, plunging with the motion of dry sobs that had no air to back them up, nothing in lungs that were exhausting themselves with hyperventilation, her body twisting into paroxysms, and _at least there was nobody to miss her_, that was important—yes, that was most important. _At least there will be nobody to miss you_.

She could feel the world grow light-headed around her, darker at the corners, and funny that she would save herself from being present at her own execution this way, betrayed and saved by panic, and time must have changed because she wasn't dead yet, and she knew she should be, should have been dead five years ago, just goes to show how Death always took what it was due, like the ocean, like soldiers buried at sea _and the water takes what its owed, in the end, the water and death, and sometimes they're one and the same, the water and death, she knew that loss, it took him._

Some part of her mind took control of her body, took over because she couldn't, lungs slowly calming, taking in the air she needed, though she wasn't sure whether passing out wouldn't have been for the best anyways.

**He** was still there, eyes shuttered, inscrutable and she couldn't help meeting those eyes, body still heaving and attempting to gather enough breath to speak, to scream, to live, and _god_ how she wanted to run, but it would do her no good and there was nowhere to go. _At least there was no one to miss her, and she wouldn't end up being taken by the water_—

She couldn't look away. A bird staring at the serpent, helpless, sparrow and cobra, with no chance if it could fight and no chance to fight because of that fixating gaze, keeping her immobile with panic, and now she would die like this, like a sparrow, with no chance and no hope, because sparrows don't die in a fight.

"Don't—" he began, extending an arm, and she would have screamed then, but she couldn't, didn't have enough air or couldn't control her own body right anymore. He withdrew the arm and folded them around himself, defensive, face set as stone, and something was _wrong_…

"What—what?" gasped Sakura, words still weak and breathy, but she had _spoken_, and that minor victory was enough for her right now, and she didn't want to think that she would die, about how she would die. _At least nobody would be there to miss her when she died, when she fell into the water, the ocean…_

"Sakura Haruno," he said again, and she latched onto that name, let it give her groundless, irrational, pointless hope.

"You tried to kill me," she said, because he had. "And Lee. Naruto, Sasuke."

"I did." There is no emotion in that voice, and she feels her hope ebbing, more rationally, but is it rational if there was nothing to give that hope any validity to start with?

"You're going to kill me." She wishes it was a question, but she doesn't want to die imagining that she might not. She doesn't want to—_make it hard to let go, let go, don't cling, don't hold on for my sake, Sakura._

"No."

"Why not?"

He doesn't answer. He might be planning to, but Sakura doesn't let him, doesn't want to let him, and she revels in this pointless little victory.

"Why not kill me? Why come here then, why come? Have you killed someone else? Who else is dead? You tried to kill Lee twice. Three times the charm? Saw Sasuke as a challenge. Who else is dead? If not me, who? What have you done that could be worse than you killing me, why else would you let me live?"

She is hysterical. She knows this, can hear it in her voice. She doesn't want to die that way, but supposes that, in the end, it doesn't really matter if she does. How you die doesn't matter _unless it's the water slipping over your head that does it, clutching you to itself, all around, implacable protector and executioner,, did you really mean to kill him?_

"Stop," he says. She realizes that he had flinched, imperceptibly, at her words, and wonders why. What he wants her to stop doing. To stop speaking…? She does stop that. Not much else to say, nobody to say any last words to, at least, nobody who will still be able to let go. _And that's important—the letting go._

His eyes are widened, unfairly young, unfairly lost. He shouldn't look like that, that innocent. Not with what he's done, what he will do.

"Why come here?" she mutters, because there's nothing else to say, and she has no hope no matter what.

When she looks up, he's gone. She's alone for the rest of the night.

She doesn't sleep.

oOoOoOo

**Author's Notes**: Ummmm. Yeeeeaaaah.

That ending half was purposely disjointed, half because of hysteria and shock and half because of things you don't know yet.

You might well have realized that, well, there _are_ people who are going to miss her, right? Well, yes. You'll find out more about this later.

Next update we get Sakura interacting with actual characters beyond Gaara, and hopefully something more in-character for Sakura, and maybe something else. It remains to be seen.

Please, _please_ read and review! Reviews are my crack.


	2. Right

**What We See  
****Chapter Two: Right  
**By Dreaming of Everything

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto, or anything connected to it. This AU is of my own creating, however, as is the story. Please do not use them without my permission.

**Author's Notes:** Sorry for the wait, everybody! I needed to do some major revamping to this story, and then I lost my inspiration for a while and decided to abandon it, then decided that I couldn't, then changed my mind, then re-changed my mind, and then had to actually write this chapter. But I've got outlines for all the rest of the chapters (it's planned to have ten, but that number's highly liable to change) so the rest shouldn't take this long.

Thank you very much to my three reviewers, **Hebi R., MYZ-chan **and **silver-eyed**!

oOoOoOo

Sakura was curiously calm the next morning.

She methodically pushed the bed away from where she'd used it to wedge herself in a corner, facing outwards at the world _in case __**he**__ returned for what's his_ in case she had _another visitor_ a visitor, so that she could see them. Not that it was likely to help.

She wiped away some of the blood that had caked onto her from where she'd clutched her arms too hard, nails digging into and through the skin, and from where she had bitten her lips, and then washed away the salt-trails her tears had left.

Next, she left a note for her current psychologist—the same harmless, helpless, honestly well-meaning woman she had met with the day before, who had asked her questions about whether she remembered—

Funny, how things could happen after all this time. Was she still alive? Yes, she thought so.

And then she dragged her blankets and pillows off of the bed, lay them in the corner, curled up on them, carefully, because she was stiff, after everything that had happened, and slipped into her other world.

Various counselors had tried to convince her that her world wasn't real, that it was a hallucination, something she had created, but that made no sense; it was the place that felt more real, made more sense, where she felt closer to who she _should be_, not who she had been born as. It was where her friends were, and there wasn't anyone in her family she was particularly close to, now, not since— Not since.

It had been a long, long time since her parents had involved themselves in her life. That had really hurt, in the beginning, but she had found a new family, different important people.

oOo

Normally, visiting her world was a comfort. It was like going home.

It was different this time. She didn't feel _safe_, because of what had happened. It wasn't that she had had an unexpected visit; she'd known that he'd come eventually, really. But she had expected to die; she hadn't expected to be forced to return, when she knew that _he_ was still out there. Waiting. Possibly even watching her—she was far from being one of the worst ninja in their year (although she was a lot further away from being the best, what with everything she ended up missing because of her obligations in the other place) but Gaara was enough to kill any one of them: Sasuke, Lee, Naruto.

So she entered hesitantly, this time, walking through the gray space that delineated the two worlds.

She came into Konoha in a deserted training field, and walked faster than she normally did into the village.

There wasn't anybody at Naruto's apartment or in the Uchiha compound, or in the training area their team normally gravitated towards. Sakura smiled with sheer relief when she finally saw the two of them, eating ramen at a stall, just another ordinary day.

"Oi! Sakura!" Naruto yelled out as she approached them. "Good morning!"

"Geez, Naruto, you're so loud!" she yelled back, feeling the tension dropping away from her with each step she took closer to her team. "Don't you know how to act like a normal human being? Good morning, Sasuke."

"Awww, you're so _mean_, Sakura! What'd I do this time?"

"Hmph. Idiot. You're too _loud_."

"Nobody asked **you**, Sasuke!"

oOo

Technically, the psych. center was a 24-7 operation. There was a list of patients considered 'serious cases,' requiring constant observation to keep themselves from hurting themselves and others. The list was divided into two subgroups: the people requiring constant human observation, someone literally in the room with them at all times, and those who didn't need the physical presence.

Sakura had originally been labeled as unlikely to be a threat—someone who was observed, but didn't need to have the camera constantly watched, or even always turned on; an occasional check-in would suffice, and it was fine if she went all night without someone looking in.

But then that mysterious attack had occurred: she had turned up in the morning shell-shocked and panicky, and with painful, self-inflicted wounds scraped into her flesh. She'd had her status switched to "constant watch—remote observation" within fifteen minutes of discovery. The institute took the health and safety of its patients very seriously.

Years had gone by without another incident, and her status had been reexamined, but not changed. The general agreement had been that Sakura still posed a danger to herself, assuming that the mysterious 'person' who had set her off the first time reappeared. Her psychologist even set out a yearly bulletin, as the anniversary of his appearance approached, warning her nightly watchers to be extra observant.

The minute Sakura had opened her eyes that night, she should have been watched, the night warden assigned to her room zeroing in on the irregular behavior. During the entirety of the ten-minute period of severe hallucination she had experienced, and the night's worth of paranoid behaviors that had followed, someone should have noticed and pressed a button that would summon people to deal with the situation.

Nothing had happened.

The Institute began its daily wake-up at eight in the morning, when the day shift began to arrive. Sakura's psychologist arrived early; she wanted to review how Sakura's night had been. There wasn't any note attached to the tape (she had asked that it be saved, so she could view it) so she simply stuck it in the player and pressed the fast-forward button, not bothering to watch a full night in real time.

She almost didn't catch it: it was at least part blind luck that let her catch the sudden movement on the tape.

She rewound the tape, and re-watched the part she had missed. Part way through the event she dropped the remote she was holding and headed towards Sakura's rooms at a dead run.

oOo

The girl wasn't responding. "Fuck!" she whispered vehemently, under her breath. She should have known something like this would have happened! Isn't that why she sent out that damned memo every year? Did the night staff think she did it for her own amusement?

The psychologist needed to follow the protocol for this sort of situation. It was forgetting the correct procedures that had caused this in the first place—she would find out who had been 'watching' the camera feeds that night, and make sure they were never put in charge of anything more important than managing the janitors ever again. She fumbled for her cell phone, pressing her quick-dial keys—3 for the central database, 2 for medical assistance—before turning her attention back to Sakura.

She was sprawled out, half on and half off of her bed, as if she had fallen, or been laying on it and thrashed so violently she'd mostly fallen off. There didn't seem to be any wounds on her, but that didn't mean that she hadn't tried to hurt herself: there were plenty of other ways a patient could damage themselves, and all her talk about being 'ninja' was worrisome. The ones with ideas were always worst.

Support arrived within seconds. The psychologist moved to the side, to let the medics at the girl.

oOo

It was nine o'clock, and the psychologist was trying to focus on new case she'd been assigned. It wasn't working.

She dropped the file with unseemly haste when her computer beeped at her, telling her she had a new email. She scanned the email quickly and concernedly, breathing a sigh of relief when she was finished.

There was nothing physically wrong with Sakura, at least. All the tests had come back clean. She hadn't ended up swallowing half a bottle of drain cleaner in an attempt to kill herself, at least, like she had been half-afraid had happened—Sakura's behavior was always slightly concerning, and she'd been far more erratic than was normal the night before.

On the other hand, a condition that was purely psychological could be much harder to treat. She frowned.

Sakura was currently in the medical bay, waiting for a scan to check for brain tumors; she was still non-reactionary, despite appearing to have nothing physically wrong with her. She'd been given a heavy dose of sedatives to help control the apparently subconscious fits of thrashing she had been experiencing. Now, she was fully still.

"Finish the report and you can go down to check up on her," the psychologist said firmly to herself, bending back to her work.

oOo

The three of them were waiting at the bridge for Kakashi, who was an hour and a half late and counting. Sakura yawned loudly, despite her attempts to cover it with a hand.

"I'm _bored,_" said Naruto emphatically. The other two ignored him.

The mid-morning sunshine pressed down on the three, warm and sleepy. Naruto yawned, and Sasuke tried to pretend he wasn't trying desperately not to.

The lazy mood was broken by Sakura's broken scream. She fell heavily, clutching blindly with one hand at the bridge railing, body flailing helplessly. She screamed again, then fell limp, one hand trailing off the side of the bridge, blood from the thick splinters she'd forced into her fingers dripping down into the river below.

oOo

Sakura awoke a few minutes later, extremely disoriented by the blur of scenery rushing past her. She tried to raise her head, and shook with the effort. "Wha—?" she managed, thickly.

"Sakura!" yelled Naruto loudly, directly into her ear. She was set down abruptly, and the world spun alarmingly before it settled down.

"Urgh," she said, looking around herself. They were on a roof…? Why had he been carrying her?

"Why were you carrying me?" she said. It seemed like a good place to start.

"You just collapsed!" said Naruto, looking frantic. "We had no idea what was gone. We were going to the emergency medical center. Sasuke went on ahead to make sure someone was available. I was taking you there. What happened?"

"I have no idea what happened," muttered Sakura, wincing at her growing headache. "It feels different, though…" She looked up, eyes wide with growing understanding. "I'm myself," she said, her tone making that sound like a revelation.

"Uh, yeah," said Naruto. "Sakura? Are you really okay?"

"No, I'm _myself_," she said. "I'm who I'm supposed to be!"

"Sakura, I really think you should go to the med center," said Naruto.

"No, no. I've never felt like I've been who I'm supposed to be, back in the other world—not here, but the other place—but I've never really been myself here, either. I've never really been a part of the real world, but I _am_ now. I can feel it!" Sakura laughed for the sheer pleasure of it.

"Oh," said Naruto. "I still really think we should go, Sakura."

"Okay, fine," she sighed, rising to her feet. She grinned at the feeling, more natural than any movement had ever felt, to her. "I can't believe you've always felt like this!" she shouted at Naruto over the rushing wind of their trip.

"What?" said Naruto, looking concerned.

Sasuke was next to them the instant they entered the hospital lobby. "Are you okay?" he said to Sakura, voice low and worried and urgent.

"Yes," said Sakura, voice jubilant, and for once it didn't have much to do with Sasuke showing that he cared for her.

"No," said Naruto flatly besides her, and then she was being ushered into an exam room, her two teammates waiting anxiously outsider her door.

And, for the first time, the world was right.

--End Chapter 2--


End file.
